Brain BREAK! presents: The Reuben.
Today I feature guest star Brenna, a fellow tutor who worked on this delicious deli epic with me. After we were done, my mouth was watering so hard that I had to celebrate with my own reuben sandwich.
They like to say DNA is like a cookbook. It has thousands of recipes. Today, DNA is my great-grandma Brunhilde’s German cookbook.
- I will ask Grandma Brunhilde for her famous reuben recipe. She doesn’t speak a lick of English, so I meekly say, “Reuben, bitte?”. Grandma opens up her cookbook, scribbles her secret recipe on a little notecard, sore joints and all. It’s all in German, and I can’t do anything with it, so I need help.
DNA opens and RNA polymerase transcribes the gene into mRNA.
- I will take the recipe to a kitchen where they have all the ingredients. They speak German there, so what is jibberish to me makes perfect sense to them. Kohl, brot, käse, rindfleisch…
mRNA travels to rRNA, where it can “read” one codon at a time, each representing one amino acid. UGC, UUA, GUA, UGG…
- The notecard will be read in the kitchen. Each cook carries one ingredient. They are marched out in order. Coleslaw, rye bread, cheese, corned beef. As this parade goes on, the ingredients come together.
An mRNA codon meets up with a corresponding tRNA “inside” of rRNA. An amino acid is released from each tRNA. Cysteine, leucine, valine, tryptophan. With each amino acid, a chain of amino acids grows longer.
And there we are! After the recipe is read in full, and the ingredients have all been rolled out, we have a delicious reuben sandwich. Protein complete! Grandma Brunhilde’s reuben can now go where it is needed (in my belly). The protein may be used as structure in a bone, for example, that is used to repair. Perhaps another day, I’ll visit Grandma Brunhilde and ask how she makes her special dumplings. She has a recipe for everything you can think of. Something like an enzyme can also be made during this same process – again, DNA stores countless genes representing every protein and process used in your body!
To sum up:
- mRNA’s job is to transcribe the DNA’s directions and deliver it. (Messenger.)
- rRNA’s job is to bring mRNA and tRNA together to translate. (Ribosomal.)
- tRNA’s job is to drop off amino acids to make proteins. (Transfer.)
No, I don’t have a great-grandma Brunhilde in real life, sadly.
Next time, strudel! -CNx